Jersey Boys Is Superb in Chicago!
October 15th, 2007Barbara Vitello of the Daily Herald states that there is no Sherry, no Dawn, no Marianne in Jersey Boys. There are no big girls crying. Jersey Boys doesn’t entirely conform to the jukebox formula, namely a score cobbled together from hit tunes, around which a contrived narrative is shoehorned. Instead, this exuberant bio-musical about the rise and fall of The Four Seasons, in a superb touring production that opened Sunday at Chicago’s LaSalle Bank Theatre, charts a wiser, more honest course.
But what makes this show are the four leads who play these blue collar boys with conviction and charisma. There’s Jarrod Spector, whose pristine falsetto Frankie Valli would be proud to call his own; earnest Drew Gehling as the group’s songwriter Bob Gaudio; Michael Ingersoll, enigmatic as Nick Massi, the self-described Ringo; and the wonderful Jeremy Kushnier, who nearly steals the show with his passionate performance (a cross between Frank Sinatra and Tony Soprano) as minor-league hood Tommy DeVito.
Read the full review on DailyHerald.com.
